Worm pics...

[JJ4417]

Well, I had an absolutely fabulous weekend...really. I've got a new upgrade tank on order, so I decided to set up a QT tank. I figure I can buy fish now, and by the time the QT is done, the tank will be ready to go. I was halfway through setting it up, but it was only 66 degrees when I went to bed. Tank crashed during the night. I woke up to almost everything dead. Except of course...a few things...

I lurked on here for almost two years before taking the plunge. To any newbies reading this...there is no better teacher than doing. All below shots will be from my 20g long. It had been established for two years prior to my purchase. It was my first attempt at SW. After getting the tank, I added more cured LR. It was sumpless, so I wanted a lot of natural filtration. I had found some euncid worms a while back and knew that I would be tearing it down eventually to get those out. I decided to take out my guilt of killing a wonderful collection of fish on fixing the tank and getting rid of the worms.

Sorry I don't have any shots of the rock prior to...but I didn't grab the camera till I went..."Oh...wow..." This will give you an idea...

Pretty much every piece of LR that I broke had worms of some type in it. It looks like they have been there a while. You can see that they have burrowed through the rock.

These types were the main ones that had burrowed into the rock. I'm not a worm expert, but for some I figured it might be interesting.

Here is a couple of shots of what is left of my LR...

If you look, you can see several worms on the ground of different types.

 

[Cope]

Wow!
Do you feel better now? You went to town on that rock!
Why dont you cook whats left and reuse? Or just let it dry out for a while?

 

[JJ4417]

In addition to a lot of bristles (which are good depending on who you talk to), I found quite a few other types...and this is about 30% of the ones I found. I finally got tired picking them out. All this...in a 20 gallon...

In the lower left, look at the width of that...bristle? It is almost as wide as the tape measure.

This one just flat ****ed me off (pun intended). I actually found him before I took the rock out and someone was nice enough to point me to Melev's ID page. He is actually the reason I started breaking rocks apart to get pics. I thought flatworms were small things on coral. I had no idea they could be two inches in diameter. Melev's ID page actually has one twice as big. He's a little torn up. As I tried to grab him, he basically disintegrated into slime.

I still don't know what this is. Is it just worm housing or some other type of critter?

I broke apart almost 20# of LR...about 80% of the pieces looked something like this...

So...my question is...I've not really seen too many threads in the general areas on worms. Is this something that everyone has in their tank? Obviously I was over feeding to garner such a collection, but my params were always just fine. I'm assuming the bioload that a couple of these must have been putting out is equal to several large fish.

 

[JJ4417]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=11884389#post11884389 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Cope
Wow!
Do you feel better now? You went to town on that rock!
Why dont you cook whats left and reuse? Or just let it dry out for a while?

Unfortunately...I don't really feel any better. My tank crashed because I am an idiot. It was hours before the fish were going into QT. Believe it or not, most of that rock crumbled. I pounded a couple of the bigger pieces, but it wasn't any wild stress relief type work. I was trying to be careful so I could get some decent shots.

The rock is all drying out now. I did leave a couple of chunks big enough to be usable in the future. I was starting to battle majano (sp?) as well, so I knew I was going to do it. I have quite a bit of places to put future frags now.

 

[dp reefer]

That mysterious thing in the middle looks like the skin of an octopus- no idea what it really is though

 

[mpoletti]

It is amazing what we have growing in our systems. I think I told you about my black Euclid wormes that were in my nano.

I have never seen anything like the that flatworm (?). This kind of stuff gives me the heebee geebee's.

 

[JJ4417]

Yea...it is a flatworm. I had no idea and had to ask. I thought the same thing as DP at first. An octopus with no tentacles? But the way it was in the rock, there was just no way. I was at a loss after that. Just figured that it could not be good.

From now on...dead dry rock...

 

[ray22]

I can t believe you are wasting those.. cook them up with some butter and garlic. MMmmmmmmm delicious

 

[dp reefer]

Speaking of worms I saw one about 12 inches long feeding on one of my emerald crabs this morning. The crab had its stomach split cleanly down the middle. I really need to figure out what is killing in my tank, gonna start baiting tonight.

 

[Paintbug]

this page should help you id the worms.
http://home2.pacific.net.ph/~sweetyummy42/hitchworms.html

with the exception of the flat worm (a polyclad flatworm), i do not see any that are, or were harmful.

 

[LeslieH]

Most of your worms are sipuncs (peanut worms) and beneficial amphinomids (fireworms); 1 or 2 look like they might be eunicids. That's very typical reef rock. I've broken off chunks of dead coral or soft stone and found there was more empty space than solid rock because of all the burrows. Normally there would also be tons of crabs & other critters as well. Your mystery is a sponge. Sponges & fireworms are the 2 main reasons I wear gloves when I do field work on reefs.

 

[JJ4417]

Thanks for the help. Just so you know, I had gloves on the whole time I was touching the worms. The pic where you can see my fingers is an after-thought photo. I actually just threw the gloves away.

I take it that I was over feeding way too much to get this kind of fire worm population?